20 years gone, but tomorrow is still to come

My Hyde Park Academy Class of 1983 will hold its 20-year reunion dance this weekend in Chicago. It's hard to believe 20 years have gone by.

I visited my alma mater Thursday to speak to about 200 incredibly bright incoming freshmen attending a summer reading program. They weren't even born until several years after I'd left Hyde Park.

Although I've returned to the high school since graduation, my last visit was more than 10 years ago. And while you expect changes, you're never quite sure what those changes might be.

The building has undergone major renovations. The facade has been sandblasted, and the landscaping greatly improved. Inside, along with lovely mosaics, video cameras and metal detectors now are present at the front entrance. Vending machines offering bottled water, juices and snacks line one of the halls. We never had any of that.

Recently, other alumni toured the school, among them folks from the Classes of 1950 and 1963. Linda Murray, one of the teachers in charge of the summer program, told me that we alumni, no matter the year, are connected by nostalgia. Irrational as it may be, we all tend to want things to be right where we left them. And, of course, when they aren't, memory and reality, the past and present, collide.

The students last week asked me how I felt about having attended Hyde Park. They asked as though they wanted to make sure they had made the right decision. Had they chosen a lemon? I told them I received an excellent education and still have fond memories of some of the teachers. Several, including Murray, are still on staff.

I remember my first day at school, walking toward the front door, scared to death and feeling queasy about the unknown, my classes, my teachers and whether I'd make new friends. Most of us students felt that way.

Everybody told us that we had this blank slate on which we could write what we wanted. We had an opportunity to get great grades and get on the right track for college. Of course, we were too young to really understand what that meant.

I remember that just when our freshman year was moving along, when we thought we had some footing, there was tragedy.

Our classmate Derrick Savage was killed. Several of us were in gym class when we learned that the night before, Derrick was sitting on a swing in a playground in Cabrini-Green when he was shot by a sniper. We were devastated.

Throughout that first year, and the ones that followed, our lessons included learning how to navigate various disappointments and adolescence as best we could.

And before we knew it, the four years had flown by, and our photos were the ones in the front of the yearbook, no longer in black-and-white, but in color.

Our prom was held in the ballroom of a downtown hotel (which is where Saturday's reunion dance will be held). Under tiny white lights that resembled stars, my one and only dance of the evening was with the guy who had been my best friend throughout high school. He would become my husband. Some of us went to college and then to professional schools. As you can imagine, some fared better than others, all relative to how you define better.

But now we, the Class of 1983, are at a time in our lives, particularly on the eve of our reunion, when we start to wonder whether we are the people we imagined we'd be. Have the past and the present collided?

In 2027, the young people I met last week will have their 20-year reunion dance. By then, they'll know that the years flow quickly. They, too, may wonder whether they resemble the people they imagined they'd be. And then they might even ask: Does it really matter?

Maybe the best thing about reunions isn't that we run into old classmates. Maybe the best thing is that we're reacquainted with our old selves. We get to hang out with those kids who were going to change the world.

We see them out there on the dance floor, and although we still may admire some of their moves, who would trade places? I surely wouldn't.